Reluctance to address mental health notifications

Another example of the unwillingness of occupational health and safety (OHS) regulators feeling able to affect change in workplace mental health by looking outside the workplace is the United Kingdom’s Health & Safety Executive (HSE). Sadly this position contributes to unnecessarily stigmatising a legitimate workplace hazard. On a recent episode of the Safety and Health …

Login or subscribe to SafetyAtWorkBlog to continue reading.

“Justice Tempered” – ethics and abuse

Recently the Finance Sector Union (FSU) released a small study on ethics and capitalism. The report illustrates how poor corporate ethics and greed created a disregard for the mental health of the finance industry’s workers as well as the financial and mental health of its customers. The report – “Justice Tempered – How the finance …

Login or subscribe to SafetyAtWorkBlog to continue reading.

Be part of the Mental Health conversation

Public submissions for Victoria’s Royal Commission into Mental Health close on July 5 2019. If you believe that work-related mental health is important, tell the Royal Commission through its, very easy, online submission process. Below is the text of the submission I made earlier this week. The website asks you questions, many more than I …

Login or subscribe to SafetyAtWorkBlog to continue reading.

Mental Health Issues Paper provides opportunity for OHS to pitch for legitimacy

Australia’s Productivity Commission (PC) has released its first Issues Paper to assist people in understanding the purposes of the Inquiry and to lodge a submission. The Report provides opportunities for the occupational health and safety (OHS) profession and advocates to explain the relevance of OHS principles in preventing psychological harm. It includes specific work-related questions …

Login or subscribe to SafetyAtWorkBlog to continue reading.

Unsafe systems of management

Excessive workplace stress in the medical profession is well documented but stress is often seen as a minor workplace hazard that is fairly easily dealt with by holidays, for instance, or is dismissed as an “occupational hazard” or part of the entry to the profession or just part of the culture, with the implication that …

Login or subscribe to SafetyAtWorkBlog to continue reading.

Where is work-related suicide in the Suicide Prevention Strategy?

For all the discussion of workplace mental health, work-related suicide continues to receive little attention.  Part of this is because unexpected fatalities are shocking and distressing, even more so when the deaths are the result of the worker’s own efforts. Recently the Mental Health Commission of Western Australia published its latest Suicide Prevention 2020 Strategy.  The strategy …

Login or subscribe to SafetyAtWorkBlog to continue reading.